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How your long commute is killing you

Maybe this is why other drivers look like zombies when they pass by on the freeway. It’s the commute of the living dead.

Slate.com reports this week how all that time you spend behind the wheel is shaving days off your life. Slate calls commuting a “migraine-inducing life-suck” and sums up a number of studies on health issues related to being stuck in traffic. On the list of traffic jam ailments is obesity, neck pain, stress and sleeplessness. Also, you’re more likely to get divorced if you’re a long commuter.

And many of us are. The average one-way commute time is now up around 24 minutes, according to the article. “About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called “extreme commuters,” whose number has doubled since 1990

Here’s more:

According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with “a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction.” It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make “non-grocery food purchases”—buying things like fast food—and will shift into “lower-intensity” exercise.

It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal.

Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..